


Just William

by MadMags



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, First Meetings, Ghosts, Language of Flowers, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadMags/pseuds/MadMags
Summary: Personal original short.





	Just William

William fell in love at the ripe old age of one hundred and two. The worst problem? He’d been dead for seventy six of those years. Dark of hair, light of eye, William Goodall had been your average hardworking man. He worked factories in the city until his lungs clouded with consumption, then he moved to the country and the farm fresh air.

Fresh air was meant to be part of the cure for that sort of thing. It helped for a time, the sun, the air, the sort of work that made a man feel satisfied and good at the end of the day. Until the pain set in, and got worse. 

At aged twenty-six, William found himself staring at a cold pale version of himself laying on a metal slab draped in a modesty cloth. He tried convincing the doctors, the coroner and all that he was damn well standing right there, but no one heard and William’s body was buried under a cheap grave with a stone marker bearing little but his name and dates. 

Years passed as William walked.

He met a few others along his way. Or at least people who could see him, but couldn’t been seen by others. Spector, ghost, soul. Whatever was left of William was left in a God forsaken limbo world.

He’d been a good God fearing man, and he was incensed at being left on the dirt of the world without so much as a little heavenly grace or fire and brimstone.

William was fully accepting that the world was his own personal hell until he meandering right into Alice’s flower shop.

Alice wasn’t the sort of woman who’d stop someone in their tracks across the street. She was somewhat plain on first glance, but she had a twinkle in her dark eyes and a crooked grin that held mischief and playfulness of a sharp mind.

And she knew her flowers. Scientific name down to the meaning of the flowers purchasers were giving. She hummed old songs that William hadn’t heard played in years, and danced with her curvy hips beneath vintage style dresses. 

Being dead meant that William had little to do, neither eating nor sleeping nor demands of a physical body - so why did Alice make butterflies flutter in his stomach and make his palms sweat?

Her boisterous laugh rang out in her little shop. The Roses Lady. William didn’t know her name, but she came in twice a month for roses. 

William knew this now, because Alice had simply become his whole world for the past year. He knew her customers, old and new. He knew she had a cat and pet hedgehog. She preferred red wine and old movies on Saturdays and slept in on Monday mornings. He knew that she liked to sneak a bit of honey on a spoon when she felt indulgent and her favorite flowers weren’t the sort of flowers to appear in any bouquet. Her tiny apartment was awash in magnolias. 

Alice had become the sun of William’s life. He was always turned towards her, laying alongside her bed at night, telling her stories of his life before death, how the world had changed, how he’d introduce himself if given the chance. 

William was one hundred and three when some man named Maddox asked for Alice’s number. He was what William might have considered a vagrant, a punk, a low-life. William argued vehemently with Alice (to no result). His anger grew as he watched his lady love courted by this stranger, this man who was stealing the love of William’s afterlife.

After their date, she brought him back to her tiny flat. 

“After all these months, Miss Alice! You might simply just hear me, just once,” William bargained. “The man kicked your puss. He’s a layabout! A cheap man who’s never worked a hard day in his life! I could build you a house from the ground, and you flatter this mongoloid with your loving gaze.”

He was so caught up in his ranting, he missed the lights flaring and dimming. 

Alice looked about the flat.

“Brown out, maybe?” Maddox suggested, reached for Alice’s elbow.

“Dunno, might be,” she said, worriedly. “Raincheck?” She flashed her crooked grin.

William crowed in triumph, the lights flared to life again, blinding in their strength.

Another week passed without word from the vagrant, and William spent his nights in adoration of Alice. She seems\ed to pale. Her laughs become less exuberant, her flower arrangements traditional, rather than inspired. He found her listlessly chewing on her pen as the storm outside the shop window pelted the door with a torrent of water.

William sighed and phased through the shop window. It was disturbing, but when doors refused to yield to his attention, he adjusted. The rain was equally ignorant of his existence, neither wetting him or falling upon his face as he turned to look up at the darkened sky. He walked without thought, face upturned.

He closed his eyes against the rain that didn’t touch his face, until he heard a screeching of tires and felt a great impact slam into his body.

“Sir, sir, are you alright?”

William blinked groggily, wincing as the first pain he’s felt in decades slammed through his head like the lightning overhead. Alice’s face swims into view. He’s surprised to see her actually looking at him for the first time.

“Sir? Can you hear me?”

William felt a softly calloused hand touch his face.

“They’re calling an ambulance. You’ve hit your head. I don’t think it’s a good idea to move,” she said.

William’s brow furrowed.

“Alice,” he managed. He felt something in his hand.

A yellow narcissus half crushed, streaked with red blood fell to the pavement, sliding in the rain water. Alice gasped, catching up the flower before the rain carried it away.

William awoke later, head bandaged and arm in a soft sling. 

“Mr. Goodwin?” a nurse asked.

“Goodall,” William corrected without thinking.

“Oh! Your identification said William Goodwin,” she said, carrying a metal chart. 

William blinked blearily. What the devil?

“Yes, yes, of course,” he rasped. “There was a woman, where is she, I must see her.”

The nurse’s face twisted up into a white, straight smile. “She’s just waiting outside for you, Mr. Goodwin,” she said.

Alice looked bedraggled and half damp as she hesitantly entered the room. 

“Um, hello,” she said, waving slightly.

William beamed. “Alice,” he said warmly.

“Do I know you?” Alice replied, head cocked to the side. She still had the small flower twirling between her fingers.  
“No, no, my dear,” William laughed. “But I should very much hope you would.”

Alice’s shoulders relaxed as she shyly crossed to the hospital bed. William smiled at the bashfulness, and his affection swelled. Alice set the flower down on the bedside table, tucking her leg under her as she sat in the uncomfortably narrow chair.

“You were holding that when you were hit by that car,” she said. 

“Was I?” William asked.

“Yes. Narcissus, doesn’t really bloom this time of year,” Alice said. “It’s a spring flower. It symbolizes-”

“Rebirth. And new beginnings,” William interrupted.

“You know flowers?” Alice asked, beginning to smile as William caught the twinkle appear in her tired eyes.

“I know very much about them, Miss Alice,” he said. 

Alice giggled, covering her mouth. “Just Alice, please, Mr…?”

“William,” he said. “Just William.”


End file.
